Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through Autism’s Unique Perspectives

Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships:  Decoding Social Mysteries Through Autism’s Unique Perspectives by Dr Temple Grandin & Sean Barron, edited by Veronica Zysk 

(Arlington TX:  Future Horizons Inc, 2016  ISBN 9781941765388)

(xi)  Our brains started shifting from only seeing the details into appreciating larger concepts.   Smaller, specific unwritten social rules started migrating under the umbella of broader categories that described social behavior.

(18)  TG:  The one thing that was the core of my self-motivation was building things.  I’ve mentioned it often now, and on purpose, as I don’t think most neurotypicals understand how much fun building things can be, and how it satisfies innate need of people with ASD.

(39)  TG:  Neurotypical people have a “social sense” right from the time they’re born.  Their learning happens through observation, whereas for chidlren and adults with ASD, learning only happens through direct experience.

(41)  TG:  Everything I feel falls into one of a few categories:  happy, sad, scared or angry.  I think part of that is the physical way my brain is built.  Other people have more association-circuits in their cortex so they develop highly complex emotional connections.

(42)  TG:  Simon Baron-Cohen’s book Mind Blindness

(46)  TG:  It took me twenty years to figure out how to handle that complex social interaction [jealousy on the job]:  pull the person into the project and give him a piece of the action.

(47)  TG:  The multidisciplinary team [studying young couples in love] found support for their two major predictions:  1) early stage, intense romantic love is associated with sub cortical reward regions rich with dopamine;  and 2) romantic love engages brain systems associated with motivation to acquire a reward.

Using functional MRI scans, they discovered love-related near-physiological systems operating  in the brain, and postulated that romantic love may have more to do with motivation, reward and “drive” aspects of behavior than it does with emotions or the sex drive.

(58)  TG:  They [adults] require less from them [ASD people], probably because they beleive they are capable of less.  Only a small percentage of people with ASD have jobs today.  

Low expectations are dangerous for people with ASD.  Without raising the bar higher and higher,  we arbitraily cap their potential and rob oursleves of the chance to learn what they are actually capable of learning and doing.  When I spoke at an Asperger conference in Japan, every single one of the AS adults at the conference had a job.  And, you know, they were halfway decent jobs.

(59)  TG:  We need to give them [ASD people] the services they need, but within an environment of high expectations and a real belief in their capacities to succeed.

(110)  TG:  People with ASD think specific-to-general while typical people think general-to-specific, and this difference in thinking pattern tips the scales heavily on the side of misunderstandings for ASD kids.  Their whole world is comprised of details - thousands of little bits of information that at first don’t necessarily have any relationship to each other, because concepts are not yet a fluid part of their thinking patterns - especially in very young children.  Furthermore, all those myriad little bits of information each have equal importance in the mind of an autistic child.  Their ability to assign various levels of meaning to the information they’re amassing is a skill yet to be developed, and in its early expression can often be wrong.

(113)  VZ:  Based on the social understanding we have achieved in our lives, we emphatically agree that perspective-taking, being able to look beyond oneself and into the mind of another person, is the single most important aspect of functioning that determines the level of social success to be achieved by a child or adult with ASD.  Through doing so, we learn that what we do affects others - in positive and negative ways.  It gives us the ability to consider our own thoughts in relation to information we process about a social situation, and then develop a response that contributes to, rather than detracts from, the social experience.

(116)  TG:  1. Visual thinker mind.  Thinks in pictures.  Often poor at algebra;  good at drawing.
2.  music and math mind.  Thinks in patterns.  Good at chess and engineering.  Instantly sees the relationship between numbers that I do not see.
3.  Verbal logic mind.  Poor at drawing and good at memorizing facts or translating foreign languages.

(143)  TG:  Flexible thinking is what’s difficult, not learning the rules.

(171)  SB:  All the rules I devised and expected the world to conform to were equal in importance.  Why?  Because each time a person followed a rule I felt a measure of control and security, regardless of the rule or situation.

…It took me many years to learn that when it comes to social interactions among people, and even understanding these social encounters in relation to myself, an unwritten rule was understood by everyone but me:  that not everything tips the scales evenly, and I needed to weigh things against each other in importance.

(173)  TG:  There are three basic levels of conceptual thinking:  1) learning rules;  2) identifying categories;  and 3) inventing new categories.

(175)  TG:  Helping children “get into their head” different and varied ways of categorizing objects is the first step in developing flexible thinking.

…It’s an unwritten rule of social relationship, and of life itself:  change is inevitable.

…On a conceptual level what we’re talking about is teaching compromise, along with a sense of what’s fair/unfair.

(181)  TG:  The only way for me to control anger was to switch it to another emotion;  you can’t get rid of emotions, you have to change your reaction - in this case, to one that would not result in me being kicked out of the plant.

(183)  SB:  I wasn’t yet able to link my need to control the situation (and those in it) with my feelings of being powerless over the world around me.

(198)  TG:  … an unwritten rule of relationships:  people keep “social history” in mind;  they weigh your good points and bad points when it comes to mistakes you make in determining their own reactions.

(199)  TG:  It’s an unwritten social rule:  there is a difference between honest mistakes and careless work.

(210)  TG:  Skills and self-esteem have to come first, or any change of feeling good about learning social rules will be squashed.

VZ:  …what matters more than the mistake you make is what you do once you realize you’ve made it.

(215)  SB:   An unwritten rule of social relationships is that forgiveness is something we do for ourselves.

(227)  SB:  As a general rule, people who seek an opinion, who are experiencing difficulties or who may simply need help and encouragement neither want to be told what to do nor want advice, because intellectually they know what to do.  Instead, they need validation that someone cares, and diplomacy is a much more effective way to go in this case.

(233)  Patricia Rakovic:  What was most startling to those of us who run this social skills group was the emotional toll just talking about the subject of honesty and lying had taken on the ASD boys.

…This is one of the few times we have experienced such a strong, anxiety-ridden, emotional reaction from the students in our social skills group when discussing any topic.

(240)  VZ:  Whereas honesty is mainly about what to say, and diplomacy is mainly about when to say it, it behooves every child and adult to learn that offering unsolicited comments isn’t always welcomed….

(253)  VZ:  An unwritten rule of social relationships is at play:  when you’re not polite in any given situation, a polite apology is the next best thing.

(260)  SB:  It’s hard to miss;  you see this lack of civility - which goes hand in hand with an overall sense of personal entitlement - at political rallies, on cable news talk shows and even at a local restaurant.

(263)  TG:  I was very project-loyal, so when I was told that something I said or did might negatively impact the overall success of the project, it made sense to me,  It didn’t lower my self-esteem because it was simply a behavior I needed to work on, not a different person I needed to become.  People who are highly social wrap everything in emotions, and tie behavior into judgments about self-worth and self-esteem.

(266)  VZ:  Keep in mind at all times that children with ASD don’t learn by observation, but by experience.

(271)  TG:  I feel the emotion associated with an event, but then it gets stored on my hard drive in pictures without the emotion.  It becomes a logic puzzle to figure out.

(294)  VZ:  Fear within any relationship is unhealthy.  Good relationships foster trust between the individuals and a sense of comfort, whether they are business or personal.

(313)  TG:  However, we concentrate so much on teaching appropriate behavior and responses that we overlook teaching the child or adult that all people in a social situation contribute to its success or failure.

(321)  TG:  As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, I didn’t even know that people communicated with their eyes until I was ini my fifties.  I missed a whole language of public behavior that was going on around me.

(326)  VZ:  It’s an unwritten rule of social relationships that most people are quick to call your attention to what you’re doing wrong and slow to praise you for what you’re doing right.

(344)  TG:  I’ve noticed with the people I’ve met over the years, both on the spectrum and within the meat packing industry, that visual thinkers oftentimes have horrible anxiety problems.  

(378)  VZ:  Whether you think of it as psycho-babble or psychological truth, an oft-repeated mantra of social relationships is this:  “the only person you can ever change is yourself.”

(398)  TG:  On the job I remember to always be “project loyal.”  My job is to complete a project I have designed and make it work.

(415)  VZ:  Adopt this mantra:  All behavior is communicatioin - what is the child trying to say?

Quotes from the Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain

 On my reading list are the last two volumes of Twain’s autobiography.  I enjoyed the “disorder” and digressions of the first two volumes but then I have my own weird, just like everyone else.

The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain 
NY:  Bantam Books, 1957

“How I Edited an Agricultural Paper”
(49)  Ah, heavens and earth, friend! if you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day.

“A Trial"
(84)  He had all a sailor’s vindictiveness against the quips and quirks of the law, and steadfastly believed that the first and last aim and object of the law and lawyers was to defeat justice.

“A True Story” - devastating critique of slavery which Twain says he took verbatim from the speech of a former slave.  Hard to use today as it includes the “n-word” and would thus be seen as “racist” now.

“The Diary of Adam and Eve”
(277)  It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.

(282)  Some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance is the price of supremacy.

“Th3 £1,000,000 Bank-Note”
(317)  Just like an Englishman, you see;  pluck to the backbone.

“The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”
(383)  Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

“Was It Heaven?  Or Hell?”
(480-481)  Time slipped along, and in the due course a change came over their spirits.  They had completed the human being’s first duty - which is to think about himself until he had exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people.

“The Belated Russian Passport”
(422)  There, alongside the door, was the trade-mark of the richest and freest and mightiest republic of all the ages:  the pine disk, with the planked eagle spread upon it, his head and shoulders among the stars, and his claws full of out-of-date war material;  and at that sight the the tears came into Alfred’s eyes, the pride of country rose in his heart, Hail Columbia boomed up in his breast, and all his fears and sorrows vanished away;  for here he was safe, safe! not all the powers of the earth would venture to cross that threshold to lay a hand upon him!

“The $30,000 Bequest”
(506)  “I don’t care!” retorted the angry man.  “It’s the way you feel, and if you weren’t so immorally pious you’d be honest and say so.”

Aleck said, with wounded dignity:
“I do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things.  There is no such thing as immoral piety.”

(514)  At bottom both were troubled and ashamed, for he was a high-up Son of Temperance, and at funerals wore an apron which no dog could look upon and retain his reason and his opinion;  and she was a WCTU, with all that implies of boiler-iron virtue and unendurable holiness.

“A Horse’s Tale”
(527)  That sort of words doesn’t keep, in the kind of climate we have out here.  [excuse the grammar as it is a horse talking]

“Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”
(571)  His face was as blank as a target after a militia shooting-match.

(579)  Oh, hold on;  there’s plenty of pain here [Heaven] - but it don’t kill.  There’s plenty of suffering here, but it don’t last.  You see, happiness ain’t a thing in itself - it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasannt.  That’s all it is.  There ain’t a thing you can mention that is happiness in its own self - it’s only so by contrast with the other thing.  And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.  Well, there’s plenty of pain and suffering in heaven - consequently there’s plenty of contrasts, and just no end of happiness.

“The Mysterious Stranger”
(646)  You people do not suspect that all of your acts are of one size and importance, but it is true;  to snatch at an appointed fly is as big with fate for you as in any other appointed act -"

(666)  Oh, it’s true.  I know your race.  It is made up of sheep.  It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities.

(6678-679)  “Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago - centuries, ages, eons, ago! - for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities.  Strange indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction!  Strange because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams:  a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made everyone of them happy, yet never made a single happy one;  who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;  who gave his angels etermal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it;  who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body;  who mouths justice and invented hell - mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell;  who mouths morals to other people and has none himself;  who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all;  who created man without invitatioin, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself;  and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!…

“You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream.  You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it.  The dream-marks are all present;  you should have recognized them earlier.

“It is true, that which I have revealed to you;  there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell.  It is all a dream - a grotesque and fooish dream.  Nothing exists but you.  And you are but  a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”

The Carbon Coin According to The Ministry for the Future

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
(NY:  Orbit, 2020  ISBN 9780316300131)

page 174: For every ton of carbon not burned, or sequestered in a way that would be certified to be real for an agreed-upon time, one century being typical in these discussions so far, you are given one carbon coin. You can trade that coin immediately for another currency on the currency exchanges, so one carbon coin would be worth a certain amount of other fiat currencies. The central banks would guarantee it at a certain minimum price, they would support a floor so it couldn’t crash. But also, it could rise above that floor as people get a sense of its value, in the usual way of currencies in the currency exchange markets.

Mary said, So really this is just a form of quantitative easing.
Yes. But directed, targeted. Meaning the creation, the first spending of the new money, would have been specifically aimed at carbon reduction. That reduction is what makes the new money in the first place. The Chen papers sometimes it CQE, carbon quantitative easing….

Page 288: Mary brought them to order. She reminded them of the meetings she had had with them over the past few years, in which she had urged them to create a new currency of their own collaboration, based on carbon sequestration, and exchangeable on currency exchanges; money like other money, but backed by the central banks working together, and securitized by the creation of long-term bonds, bonds with a century pay-out at a guaranteed rate of return large enough to tempt anyone interested in fiscal stability. In essence, as she had been saying, creating a way to invest in survival, to go long on civilization, as opposed to the many ingenious way that finance had found to short civilization, thus in the process shifting most of the surplus value created in the last four decades to the richest two percent of the population, making those few so rich that they could imagine surviving the crash of civilization, they and their descendants living on into some poorly imagined gated-community post-apocalypse in which servants and food and fuel and games would still be available to them.

Page 290: … a carbon coin, a digital currency backed by a consortium of all the big central banks, with open access for more central banks to join; these coins to be backed by long-term bonds created by the consortium, and shored up against financial attacks by speculators who were sure to attack it. Defended by all the central banks working together, they would be able to repulse successfully any entities that tried to hamstring their new system. Indeed, if the central banks blockchained not just the new carbon coins but all the fiat money that existed, they could probably squeeze parastic speculators right out of existence. The best defense being a good offense.
Page 294: They would issue together a single new currency, coordinated through the BIS [Bank for International Settlements] : one coin per ton of carbon-dioxide-equivalent sequestered from the atmosphere, either by not burning what would have been burned in the ordinary course of things, or by pulling it back out of the air. They promised to establish a floor in the value of this carbon coin, which exposed them to great danger from speculators trying to scare money out of the plan; and they foretold a rise in the value of the currency over the coming decades. By doing these things trhey made this investment a sure thing, assuming civilization itself survived.

Page 294: They [a consortium of all the big central banks, with open access for more central banks to join] would issue together a single new currency, coordinated through the BIS [Bank for International Settlements]: one coin per ton of carbon-dioxide-equivalent sequestered from the atmosphere, either by not burning what would have been burned in the ordinary course of things, or by pulling it back out of the air. They promised to establish a floor in the value of this carbon coin, which exposed them to great danger from speculators trying to scare money out of the plan; and they foretold a rise in the value of the currency over the coming decades. By doing these things they made this investment a sure thing, assuming civilization itself survived.

Page 295: In fact, at the end of the agreement they all lent some fiat money of the ordinary kind, pooled into a fund administered through the BIS, which would be enough to pay for this new bureaucracy of verification that would have to be created to certify that carbon was rally being sequestered. This was a bureaucracy so vast no single bank could afford it, nor of course the ministry, not even close. It was almost a full employment plan all by itself.

Page 333: If all fiat money everywhere went digital and got recorded in blockchains, so that its location and transaction history could be traced and seen by all, then illegal tax dodges could be driven into non-existence by sanction, embargo, seizure, and erasure.

Thus it will be seen that a fully considered and vigorous tax regime, using digital trackable currencies and instituted by all the nations on Earth by way of an international treaty brokered by the UN of the World Bank or some other international organization, could quickly stimulate rapid change in behavior and in wealth distribution. Some might even call it revoutionary change.

The Power of Nonviolence by Richard Gregg

 The Power of Nonviolence by Richard Gregg 

Nyack, N.Y.: Fellowship Publications, 1959

(15-16)  Hungarian successful nonviolent resistance to Austria by Ferenc Deak ending with a new constitution in February 1867 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_Resistance_(Hungary)]

(29)  Late in 1940 the Nazis displayed the swastika emblem from a Danish public building.  According to a report in The New York Times, “the monarch protested that the act was contrary to the occupation agreement and demanded that the flag be removed.  The German military officials refused.  ‘I will send a soldier to remove it,’ the king replied, or so the story ran.  He was informed the soldier would be shot.  ‘I am the soldier,’ he retorted, and the Nazi flag was lowered.”

… When the Germans tried to compel the Danes to adopt the Nürnberg laws against the Jews, the Danes refused,  When the Germans ordered that all Danish Jews should wear a yellow star and that a Jewish ghetto would be established, King Christian announced that if this were done he would be pleased to move from his palace to such a ghetto and, accorded to and Associated Press dispatch of October 11, 1942, said, “If the Germans want to put the yellow Jewish star in Denmark, I and my whole family will wear it as a sign of the highest distinction.”  He attended in full uniform a special celebration in a Copenhagen synagogue.  All over Denmark opposition to the German plans of repression arose.
NB:   The Danes evacuated 7,220 of Denmark's 7,800 Jews, plus 686 non-Jewish spouses, to neutral Sweden before the Nazis could round them up.

(31)  Haaken Holmboe, Norwegian teacher who helped organize teachers’ nonviolent resistance in Quisling’s Norway
Editorial Comment:  Norwegian teachers refused to teach Quisling's new curriculum.  Hundreds were jailed and sent to concentration camps to do forced labor.  They held out for a year and returned to teaching while Quisling's Nazi curriculum was dropped.

(35)  This Norwegian nonviolent resistance was possible because all the people were self-respecting, self-reliant, self-confident, courageous, filled with a spirit of unity, independence and liberty, and felt urgently and steadily that they had to resist somehow.  It was unpremeditated and spontaneous.

(38)  The transportation committee [in Montgomery, AL] first organized a Negro taxi service but this was blocked by an existing law which required a minimum fare of 45 cents for any taxi ride.  Then a car-pool was formed and later was added to by station wagons bought and oeprated for the purpose by several of the Negro churches and by other contributors.
NB:  possibiity of swadeshi, reminder of credit pooling by original Populists

(39)  The insurance companies were pressured into canceling the insurance on Negro cars.  But this attack was defeated by getting insurance from Lloyds of London

(40)  The city [Montgomery, Alabama] brought suit in November 1959 to enjoin the operation of the Negro car pool.  The petition was directed against the Montgomery Improvement Association and several Negro churches and individuals.

(50)  Christ, searching for a change in men more profound and important than immediate external acts, told them to get rid of anger and greed, knowing, I believe, that if this took place, war would disappear.

Courageous violence, to try to prevent or stop a wrong, is better than cowardly acquiescence.  Cowardice is more harmful morally than violence.

(51)  The nonviolent resister seeks a solution under which both parties can have complete self-respect and mutual respect, a settlement that will implement the new desires and full energies of both parties.  The nonviolent resister seeks to help the violent attacker to re-establish his moral balance on a level higher and more secure than that from which he first launched his violent action.  The function of the nonviolent type of resistance is not to harm the opponent nor impose a solution against his will, but to help both parties into a more secure, relative, happy, and truthful relationship.

(55)  … in nonviolent resistance, both anger and fear are controlled.

(61)  William Alanson White:  “It follows, too, that no conflict can be solved at the level of conflict.  That is, two mutually opposed tendencies can never unite their forces except at a higher level, in an all inclusive synthesis which lifts the whole situation to a level above that upon which the conflict rose.”

(62)  Peace imposed by violence is not psychological peace but a suppressed conflict.  It is unstable, for it contains the seeds of its own destruction.  The outer condition is not a true reflection of the inner condition.  But in peace secured by true nonviolent resistance there is no longer any inner conflict;  a new channel is found, in which both the formerly conflicting energies are at work in the same direction and in harmony.

(63)  So love is a great principle in moral dynamics.  It does not suppress to thwart the energy behind fear and anger but uses it, and finds way to steer it into channels desirable to both parties to the conflict.  

(66)  Fear and anger are closely allied.  They have the same origin or purpose:  to separate a person from a living creature, force or situation considered by the person to be painful, threatening or dangerous to his comfort or well-being, the easy action of his instincts or his very existence.  If the person feels that he is stronger than the threatening force or situation, the emotion is anger, while if he estimates the danger as stronger than himself (including his skill), the emotion is fear.

…  Hate is a sort of deferred or thwarted anger.

(67)  We know that the elemental instinct of flight and its corresponding emotion, fear, can be controlled and disciplined by military training.
NB:  fight, flight, or freeze

… The new discipline probably is more quantitatively more difficult, because it involved control of both fear and anger, but it is not qualitatively or intrinsically more difficult, because both these emotions are similar in origin and in ultimate purpose, namely, human-preservation through individual self-preservation.

(71)  Violence is based upon fear and anger and uses them to the utmost.  We have seen that these two emotions are based on the idea of separation, of division.  Nonviolent resistance, on the other hand, is based upon the idea of unity.  The hypothesis of nonviolent resisters is that the strongest factor in human beings, in the long run, is their unity - that they have more in common as  a human family than as separate individuals.

(72)  War seeks to demoralize the opponent, to break a will, to destroy his confidence, enthusiasm and hope.  Nonviolent resistance demoralizes the opponent only to re-establish in him a new morale that is finer because it is based on sounder values.  Nonviolent resistance does not break the opponent’s will but alters it;  does not destroy his confidence, enthusiasm and hope but transfers them to a finer purpose.

(74)  Frederick the Great wrote, “If my soldiers began to think, not one would remain in the ranks.”  As soon as a soldier begins to think of certain sorts of things, he begins to be an individual, to separate himself from the mass mind, the will and personality of the army.  If, then, the soldier is made to think for himself in the midst of a conflict, a start has been made toward the disintegration of his morale.
NB:  The key is eye to eye contact, Auschwitz satyagraha, death march survivor, cops and a bathroom mirror during a Tompkins Square Park homeless riot... and other examples

(75)  The Duke of Wellington put it forcefully:  “No man with any scruples of conscience is fit to be a soldier.”  One of the most important elements in a soldier’s morale, as Hocking has indicated, is his consciousness of being a protector.  If he is deprived of that, he feels useless and perhaps a little absurd.

…Inaction is notoriously hard on a soldier’s morale.

(78)  In nonviolent resistance the suffering is itself a weapon or means of winning.
NB:  less suffering than determination, I believe

(86)  In quality a victory by nonviolent resistance is far more gallant and joyous than one by violence can ever be.  It requires no lying, distortion or suprression of the truth, no slaughter or threats.  It leaves no bad conscience or bad taste in the mouth.  The public opinion it gains is weighty and lasting.

Still another way in which mass nonviolent resistance operates is to end and clear away social defects, economic mistakes and political errors.  The semi-military discipline of the resisters, the getting rid of bad habits, the learning to struggle without anger, the social unity developed, the emphasis on moral factors, the appeal to the finest spirit of the opponents and onlookers, the generosity and kindness required - all these constitute a social purification, a creation of truer values and actions among all concerned.

(87)  When truth is more nearly approximated in action there is a tremendous gain in strength as well as a liberation.

(89)  Ghana, the new member of the British Commonwealth in West Africa, won its freedom in 1957 after a ten-year nonviolent struggle.  Its leader, Kwame Nkrumah, in his autobiography says explicitly that the campaign for freedom was “based on the principle of absolute nonviolence as used by Gandhi in India,” and “We repudiate war and violence."

(95-96)  Clausewitz’s principles of war have been summarized by a British writer [AA Walser]:  “Retaining the initiative, using the defensive form of action, concentration of force at the decisive point, the determination of that point, the superiority of the moral factor to purely material resources, the proper relation between attack and defense, and the will to victory.”

(97)  But psychologically, nonviolent resistance differs in one respect from war.  The object is not to make the opponent believe that he is crushed but to persuade him to realize that he can attain practical security, or whatever else his ultimate desire may be, by easier and surer means than he saw formerly.  The effort is furthermore to help him work out such new means, not rigidly or on any a priori plan, but flexibly in accordance with the deepest growing truth of the entire situation in all its bearings.  Nonviolence does not destroy the opponent’s courage, but merely alters his belief that his will and desire must be satisfied only in _his_ way.  Thus he is led to see the situation in a broader, more fundamental and far-sighted way, so as to work out a solution which will more nearly satisfy both parties in the light of a new set of conditions.

(103-104)  The nonviolent resister believes that a large part of the activities that the state are founded upon [is] a mistake, namely, the idea that fear is the strongest and best sanction for group action and association.

(104-105)  The struggle is fundamentally in the realm of ideas and moral principles, as Napoleon and other military writers have pointed out.  Since it is axiomatic among all warriors that the best form of defense is to attack, then the most efficient attack is not in the realm of material weapons but in the realm of ideas, feelings and moral principles.  I do not mean mere argument, though that is important, but still more by putting fine moral principles into action, by being strictly honest and candid with oneself as well as one’s opponents, admitting one’s past mistakes, first, unilaterally (every one of us has made mistakes), respecting one’s opponents and showing it in deeds, being willing to yield something - even something big and valuable, provided it is not a principle - being kind and generous to the opponents, stopping all threats and harsh holding-fast to the right.  This will be very difficult, a very high price to pay for peace.  But with all the load of past moral mistakes everywhere, we cannot have peace unless we are willing to pay a high price.

(105)  Peace, on the other hand, is not an institution.  Like happiness and liberty, it cannot be had by direct effort.  It is an indirect byproduct of other conditions, chief of which are mutual trust and a strong sense of the unity of mankind and its overriding importance.  Trust, in turn, grows out of deeds that reveal continuing intelligence, good will and desire to cooperate and promote the common welfare.  These underlying attitudes can be stimulated to grow.  Their growth can be begun unilaterally.  It is upon their developoment and growth that effort should be concentrated.  Once they are strong and permanent, peace will come automatically,

(107)  The advantages of nonviolent resistance is that it begins at home and can and needs to be practiced in all the small private relations bretween people as a preparation for and accompaniment of its use on a large scale.  Nobody can dodge the responsibility for its success.  The poorest and most insignificant can practice it as finely, successfully and usefully as prime ministers, presidents, financiers, labor leaders or other powerful persons.  Through nonviolent resistance we can reach an active, reasoned belief in the conditions that result in peace, conditions capable of continuous practice in all grades of life and all sorts of conflict, so as to educate everyone into a conviction that they give better results, more efficiently, than violence.

(122)  In conflict, what needs to be done is to change not people as such, but their attachment to certain ideas, sentiments, desires, and assumptions.  Such changes are not effected by killing or wounding the opponents.

(123)  In the persuasion of nonviolent resistance, there must be not only gentleness and love but also truth.  All human beings make mistakes.  Adherence to truth requires public admission of our mistakes.

(123-124)  There are other advantages in thus notifying the adversary in advance of what you are planning to do.  It shows a special kind of courage without threat.  It is a demonstration to the opponent and the public that you are truthful even when it is risky, and that you adhere to truth and trust it even at personal sacrifice or when it does not seem at first to be to the advantage of your cause.

(124)  Since trust is an essential prerequisite to persuasion, and truth creates trust, persistent devotion to truth at all costs is strongly persuasive.

(132)  The result of such interaction [search for common purpose] is not compromise but growth and adaptation, a change of character without loss of permanent integrity.

(147)  We who believe in nonviolence must change our habits before we ask an opponent to change his.

(148)  Hence nonviolent resisters in order to alter opponents must first subject themselves to self-discipline.

(151)  Stride Toward Freedom by Martin Luther King Jr
Conquest of Violence by Joan V Bondurant

(156)  Acquiring self-respect mitigates the resentment that is caused by humiliations, and thus makes self-control easier.  That is a great help toward success in using nonviolent resistance.

(163)  One of the hardest things which conscientious objectors during the world wars had to beat was a feeling of loneliness, a feeling that nobody agreed with them or cared about them.

(166)  Manual Work.  The beginning of action adequate to our problem is manual work.  Something all members of a team can work at together would be best, and that will be a service to the community.
NB:  swadeshi - not mentioned in the book or the index
barnraising, mutual aid and association

(167)  If believers in constructive, loving nonviolence will give their labor regularly and steadily to such repairs, sanitation work and cleaning-up, they will promote both individual and community morale and good feeling.

(182)  Danilo Dulci, Palermo (London:  MacGibbon & Kee, 1958) - Dolci was the Italian Gandhi

Camps: A Guide to 21st Century Space by Charlie Hailey

Camps: A Guide to 21st Century Space by Charlie Hailey
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009
ISBN 978-0-262-51287-9

(56) The neo-summer camp then approaches what [Hakim] Bey calls the “utopia of utopia” where work is play and threat becomes solution.
(90) Cosimo Rondo camped for most of his life as baron of the trees. Having left his parents’ table on June 15, 1767, the twelve-year-old oversaw central Europe’s green canopy wihtout ever setting foot on earth again.
NB: Italo Calvino The Baron of the Trees

(158) Leave No Trace [LNT]
IN this way, the LNT principles have their origins in the practices of camping but imply a reading far beyond the campground to frame outdoor ethics as a way of living:
1. Plan ahead and prepare
2. Travel and camp on durable surfaces
3. Dispose of waste properly
4. Leave what you find
5. Minimize campfire impacts
6. Respect wildlife
7. Be considerate of other visitors

(159) If the camping principles of LNT reflect the ethical underpinnings of governmental policy for an evolving national program to manage wilderness, then the Earth Guardians might be its localized practitioners and the Burning Man parlance of matter out of place (MOOP), its vernacular. After their certification as LNT Masters by the Bureau of Land Managemnt (BLM) in the Cabez Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, the Earth Guardians returned to the 2002 Burning Man with the objective to “green” the festival’s termporary city. The event’s theme camps can be certified as Leave No Trace sites, and in 2006 the Guardians estalished an LNT Model Camp Tour to showcase camps with LNT best practices. Solar showers, recycled materials, gray-water disposal, and other green technologies are profiled in the tour.
NB: John Todd’s ecological waste treatment

(201) The Royal Air Force occupied the now militarized holiday camp as RAF Hunmanby Moor, accomodating six thousand military personnel. Such wartime appropriation was not new - Cunningham’s Young Men’s Holiday Camp, thought to have initiated the holiday camping tradition, was transformed into an internment camp during the First World War. This ready, though uneasy, translation of holiday camp into places of detainment and military organization suggest how fluidly, and sometimes alarmingly, the spaces of camps in their perceived temporality can be transformed in kind but also by degree.

(267 -268) Planning to design playgrounds and gardens for the internees, Isamu Noguchi, the sculptor of Nisei Japanese and American descent, left his home in New York and voluntarily entered the Poston Relocation Center on May 12, 1942. When his plans for a cooperative community proved impossible, it took Noguchi seven months to be discharged from the camp, having only been able to negotiate a temporary permit for his release. But the experience of the camp followed Noguchi and his work, as the existence of the internment camps has remained in the landscapes of many of the country’s extant military camps. Immediately after his release in November 1942, Noguchi produced the Monument to Heroes and sculpted My Arizona and the cast bronze This Tortured Earth.

(325) aporia [ecological aporia] - an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory.
"the celebrated aporia whereby a Cretan declares all Cretans to be liars"
In Transitional Settlement [Transitional Settlement/Displaced Populations by Tom Cosellis and Antonella Vitale (Oxford: Oxfam, GD, 2005)], the objectives of the refugee camp work between safety and assistance, within a semipermanent zone of expected, and by some measures planned, obsolescence; “Camps are not intended to be sustainable settlements, but every effort should be made to create and support livelihood opportunities for displaced populations, to empower them by increasing their self-sufficiency, and to reduce demands upon the aid community.” Considering the scale of refugee camps, many of which exceed populations of twenty thousand, environmental impacts complicate sustainable practices: “Camps are invariably established on marginal land, with little productive potential for agriculture and livestock; if the land was not marginal, the community would probably be using it.” Caught in this ecological aporia, camps succeed environmentally only when the increasingly complex needs of the displaced population are met more effectively with fewer resources. If natural disasters alone affected two billion people in the twentieth century’s last decade, then the environmental impacts of the resulting refugee and IDP camps yield increasingly great epiphenomena. Mandate refugees soon become environmental refugees, who are then joined by economic refugees. And when one-quarter of a region’s population lives in semipermanent camps, as in the case of Tanzania’s Kasulu district, environmental and social constraints collide.

(328) castramentation - the making or laying out of a military camp
...the military camp’s systems of control and the evolution of twentieth-century housing plans primarily arising out of Western traditions.

(349) More recent research, carried out in combined civilian and military studies, has addressed language translation, open-source communications, and network infrastructure. Strong Angel’s Pony Express models a mobile vehicle used to establish a wireless cloud that services the immediate area of emergency and provides what is called a “sync groove,” linking with other sites across a hypothetical camp (see “Mock Refugee Camp” section). Coordination has also improved with the development of such projects as Global MapAid, an NGO specializing in the distribution of GIS technologies.

(390) On March 31, 1933, the U.S. Congress authorized the president to direct emergency conservation work “for the relief of unemployment through the performance of useful public work.” The purpose of the resulting Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) agency was to conserve and develop the nation’s natural resouces. As government-administered versions of the work camp model, ECW camps hosted a half million unemployed youth by the summer of 1935. ECW camps became CCC camps with new legislation in 1936, creating the Civilian Conservation Corps and limiting enrollment to three hundred thousand men - a total made up of unmarried male citizens between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three, no more than thirty thousand veterans, and a maximum of ten thousand American Indians. Enrollees were required to devote a minimum of ten hours per week to “general educational and vocational training” - concretizing the learning component of CCC’s overall mission. As the main fiscal agent, the War Department served as the primary administrator within a complicated network of governance by three other departments - Labor, Agriculture, and Interior, Throughout its nine-year history, the program administered more than four thousand CCC camps.

(396) Camp Katrina generated the organization “Burners Without Borders” (BWB). With its mission and projects coming directly out of the experiences in Pearlington and Biloxi, BWB is an “international network of volunteers dedicated creating community though social food works that reflect inclusion, self-reliance, civic responsability, gifting, and above all, the belief that doing good can be fun, and done with style.”
NB: Rainbow Family disaster and advance teams, Cajun Navy, eco-restoration villages

(397) Burners Without Borders https://www.burnerswithoutborders.org

(400) Gary Smith’s Radical Compassion about the Jesuit priest’s work with homeless communities in Portland

Breathing Consciously

 The most useful and easiest health practice I know of is breathing.  At the beginning of these COVID times I began to explore it a little more and took a free breath training course at https://breatheologyworld.com/courses/breath-training-in-the-corona-crisis/

There I learned of a simple rhythm of inhaling through the nose and exhaling, twice as long as the inhale, through either nose or mouth, and that doing this relaxes the vagus nerve, the longest nerve in the body and the rest of the nervous system.  The people who do this consciously a few minutes a day probably receive health benefits from it and can use it for first aid after an injury or shock.

Breatheology:  The Art of Conscious Breathing (Breatheology, 2010 https://www.breatheology.com/free-ebook-covid-19/) came with the course and is an introduction to pranayama, the ancient Hindu breathing practices.

Here’s what the book recommends for breathing and pain relief:

1) Gently breathe out and focus on the sore or painful area, while one hand (yours or someone else’s) touches the area. In this way you achieve maximum awareness and can loosen up e.g. cramped muscles in the neck or shoulders. When you consciously “let go” of the area through nerve impulses from the brain, the muscles release their cramped condition. You can clearly feel the muscle “letting go” – like when you stretch a tense calf after a long run.

2) Gently breathe out and focus your consciousness on your breath. Press your lips together or hold the air back with your tongue to produce a “pseeeee” sound when you breathe out. Now visualize the place where you experienced pain, and imagine that the area heals more and more for each exhalation. Feel the heat spreading in precisely the areas that you focus on. This exercise can easily take 5-10 minutes.

3) Try hyperventilating energetically with 10-20 breaths. This breathing pattern often occurs spontaneously in laboring women and in people who experience sudden pain. Readily produce an audible sound and concentrate solely on the breathing mechanism. An intense hyperventilation will lead to many temporary changes in your body – your blood pressure will rise, your heart will work faster, the acidity of your blood will change and you will secrete a lot of adrenalin, which “prepares you for battle”. With all these distractions, you are bound to redirect your focus from the pain. It will become secondary to the many other changes that occur in your body.

4) Do 10 hook breaths by pushing the diaphragm and chest down after a full inhalation. You probably use hook breathing spontaneously when you lift something heavy. This is also used by laboring women. In this way you create a higher oxygen tension in your lungs, which will lead to a greater oxygen concentration in the blood. Apart from temporarily changing your oxygen tension and blood pressure, it will also stimulate your nerves and create a kind of relaxation afterwards.

5) Take a walk in a forest, find a deserted beach or lie down under your comforter. Scream at the top of your lungs. Do it 5-10 times. This will loosen up physical and mental tension, frustration and pain. By freeing yourself and stimulating your lungs, diaphragm, solar plexus and the rest of your nervous system, you create a soothing and refreshing sensation throughout your body. This is also a good exercise to use when you have stress.

6) Breathe calmly – use Victorious Breath*, if you like. Make your exhalation twice as long as your inhalation as in the simple pranayama exercises, as this will have a strong stimulatory effect on your vagus nerve and thus the entire soothing part of the nervous system. At the same time, try to “enter” the pain. Examine it and accept it. In time you will become so eager to “investigate” your pain that it will disappear completely.

7) Breathe calmly using the Victorious breath and take as much time as you can breathing out. Exhale through the mouth instead of the nose, and produce a deep and soft “hmmmmmmmm” sound. You can also make it sharper and higher “heeeeeee”, if you feel like it. The sound should be as smooth and melodic as possible. This is a pranayama exer- cise and is called bhramari. In Sanskrit bhramara means “bumblebee”, so this is the sound you should try to imitate. The exercise creates a lot of vibrations throughout your body and vitalizes your cells with a micro-massage. Apart from cleansing your cells and your nervous sys- tem, bhramari is also a formidable relaxation and concentration exer- cise that is good for insomnia. Alternatively, use the sacred mantra Om (pronounced “AAAAUUUMMMMMM”). This mantra is sure to make you feel the vitalizing vibrations in your entire body, at first in your chest and then your throat, jaws and your head. Besides oxygenating your lungs and having a relaxing and de-stressing effect, it will prepare you men- tally to accept and cope with your pain.

8) Perform the exercise Paradise and use all your senses to experience the place as intensely as possible. Expand the exercise by observing yourself moving around in your paradise, light as a feather and without any tension or pain. Make sure your breath is as smooth and effortless as your weightless walk. In time, you will also be able to lower the sen- sitivity in the area of the brain where pain impressions are processed, whereby the discomfort seems less severe.


*VICTORIOUS BREATH (UJJAYI)
The exercise is extremely simple: When you inhale, make a little constriction in your throat to produce an even hissing sound. I believe you can describe the sound as being a bit “dry” - almost like a whisper. If you say “ngg” when you inhale, I am quite sure that you are on track. The entire sound is somewhat like “nggeeeeeeeh”. Try bringing your breath to a halt several times during the same breath – that is says “ngg”, “ngg”, “ngg” – then you will soon sense which part of the throat to move. Remember to keep the rest of your head and face completely relaxed. When you exhale, you can produce the sound “uee”. The entire sound is “uee – hhhhh”. When you learn to control where and how to constrict the throat, you can leave out the “ngg” and “uee” and just let the breath flow to the sounds of “eeeeeeehhh” during inhalation and “hhhhhhh- heee” during exhalation.

The sound you are hearing is an amplified version of the sound that occurs naturally when you breathe. According to the ancient scriptures, this sound is a kind of repeating prayer – a mantra that sounds like “so- ham”. The key to Victorious Breath is the slight constriction in the throat, since this enables you to completely control the flow of air. By varying the degree of constriction in the throat, you can determine the amount of air that enters (or exits) and its velocity. It is the key to your perfect breath, and no other exercise is higher, stronger or more effective than Victorious Breath. You can perform it anywhere, standing, walking, lying down, running or swimming. Apart from the altogether calming effect, Victorious Breath is also useful to people who suffer stress, depression and asthma. Victorious Breath is applied to all asanas and as a fundamental element of many other pranayama exercises.

———— 

May this information be of use.

Richard Gregg's The Power of Nonviolence

The Power of Nonviolence by Richard Gregg (NY:  Schocken Books, 1935, 1959) was recommended by Martin Luther King Jr.  I have read some Gandhi, most deeply on Gandhian economics (http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2014/04/sarvodaya-swaraj-and-swadeshi.html), and know about other nonviolent leaders like Abdul Ghaffar Khan (http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/01/ghaffar-khan-nonviolent-badshah-of.html). Gregg's book includes more examples of effective nonviolence.  It taught me a lot.

   

(15-16)  Hungarian successful nonviolent resistance to Austria by Ferenc Deak ending with a new constitution in February 1867 

(29)  Late in 1940 the Nazis displayed the swastika emblem from a Danish public building.  According to a report in The New York Times, “the monarch protested that the act was contrary to the occupation agreement and demanded that the flag be removed.  The German military officials refused.  ‘I will send a soldier to remove it,’ the king replied, or so the story ran.  He was informed the soldier would be shot.  ‘I am the soldier,’ he retorted, and the Nazi flag was lowered.”

… When the Germans tried to compel the Danes to adopt the Nürnberg laws against the Jews, the Danes refused,  When the Germans ordered that all Danish Jews should wear a yellow star and that a Jewish ghetto would be established, King Christian announced that if this were done he would be pleased to move from his palace to such a ghetto and, accorded to and Associated Press dispatch of October 11, 1942, said, “If the Germans want to put the yellow Jewish star in Denmark, I and my whole family will wear it as a sign of the highest distinction.”  He attended in full uniform a special celebration in a Copenhagen synagogue.  All over Denmark opposition to the German plans of repression arose.

NB:   The Danes evacuated 7,220 of Denmark's 7,800 Jews, plus 686 non-Jewish spouses, to neutral Sweden before the Nazis could round them up.

(31)  Haaken Holmboe, Norwegian teacher who helped organize teachers’ nonviolent resistance in Quisling’s Norway

Editorial Comment:  Norwegian teachers refused to teach Quisling's new curriculum.  Hundreds were jailed and sent to concentrations camps to do forced labor.  They held out for a year and returned to teaching while Quisling's Nazi curriculum was dropped.

(35)  This Norwegian nonviolent resistance was possible because all the people were self-respecting, self-reliant, self-confident, courageous, filled with a spirit of unity, independence and liberty, and felt urgently and steadily that they had to resist somehow.  It was unpremeditated and spontaneous.

(38)  The transportation committee [in Montgomery, AL] first organized a Negro taxi service but this was blocked by an existing law which required a minimum fare of 45 cents for any taxi ride.  Then a car-pool was formed and later was added to by station wagons bought and oeprated for the purpose by several of the Negro churches and by other contributors.

NB:  possibiity of swadeshi, reminder of credit pooling by original Populists

(39)  The insurance companies were pressured into canceling the insurance on Negro cars.  But this attack was defeated by getting insurance from Lloyds of London

(40)  The city [Montgomery, Alabama] brought suit in November 1959 to enjoin the operation of the Negro car pool.  The petition was directed against the Montgomery Improvement Association and several Negro churches and individuals.

(50)  Christ, searching for a change in men more profound and important than immediate external acts, told them to get rid of anger and greed, knowing, I believe, that if this took place, war would disappear.

Courageous violence, to try to prevent or stop a wrong, is better than cowardly acquiescence.  Cowardice is more harmful morally than violence.

(51)  The nonviolent resister seeks a solution under which both parties can have complete self-respect and mutual respect, a settlement that will implement the new desires and full energies of both parties.  The nonviolent resister seeks to help the violent attacker to re-establish his moral balance on a level higher and more secure than that from which he first launched his violent action.  The function of the nonviolent type of resistance is not to harm the opponent nor impose a solution against his will, but to help both parties into a more secure, relative, happy, and truthful relationship.

(55)  … in nonviolent resistance, both anger and fear are controlled.

(61)  William Alanson White:  “It follows, too, that no conflict can be solved at the level of conflict.  That is, two mutually opposed tendencies can never unite their forces except at a higher level, in an all inclusive synthesis which lifts the whole situation to a level above that upon which the conflict rose.”

(62)  Peace imposed by violence is not psychological peace but a suppressed conflict.  It is unstable, for it contains the seeds of its own destruction.  The outer condition is not a true reflection of the inner condition.  But in peace secured by true nonviolent resistance there is no longer any inner conflict;  a new channel is found, in which both the formerly conflicting energies are at work in the same direction and in harmony.

(63)  So love is a great principle in moral dynamics.  It does not suppress to thwart the energy behind fear and anger but uses it, and finds way to steer it into channels desirable to both parties to the conflict.  

(66)  Fear and anger are closely allied.  They have the same origin or purpose:  to separate a person from a living creature, force or situation considered by the person to be painful, threatening or dangerous to his comfort or well-being, the easy action of his instincts or his very existence.  If the person feels that he is stronger than the threatening force or situation, the emotion is anger, while if he estimates the danger as stronger than himself (including his skill), the emotion is fear.

…  Hate is a sort of deferred or thwarted anger.

(67)  We know that the elemental instinct of flight and its corresponding emotion, fear, can be controlled and disciplined by military training.

NB:  fight, flight, or freeze

… The new discipline probably is more quantitatively more difficult, because it involved control of both fear and anger, but it is not qualitatively or intrinsically more difficult, because both these emotions are similar in origin and in ultimate purpose, namely, human-preservation through individual self-preservation.

(71)  Violence is based upon fear and anger and uses them to the utmost.  We have seen that these two emotions are based on the idea of separation, of division.  Nonviolent resistance, on the other hand, is based upon the idea of unity.  The hypothesis of nonviolent resisters is that the strongest factor in human beings, in the long run, is their unity - that they have more in common as  a human family than as separate individuals.

(72)  War seeks to demoralize the opponent, to break a will, to destroy his confidence, enthusiasm and hope.  Nonviolent resistance demoralizes the opponent only to re-establish in him a new morale that is finer because it is based on sounder values.  Nonviolent resistance does not break the opponent’s will but alters it;  does not destroy his confidence, enthusiasm and hope but transfers them to a finer purpose.

(74)  Frederick the Great wrote, “If my soldiers began to think, not one would remain in the ranks.”  As soon as a soldier begins to think of certain sorts of things, he begins to be an individual, to separate himself from the mass mind, the will and personality of the army.  If, then, the soldier is made to think for himself in the midst of a conflict, a start has been made toward the disintegration of his morale.

NB:  The key is eye to eye contact, Auschwitz satyagraha, death march survivor, cops and a bathroom mirror during a Tompkins Square Park homeless riot... and other examples

(75)  The Duke of Wellington put it forcefully:  “No man with any scruples of conscience is fit to be a soldier.”  One of the most important elements in a soldier’s morale, as Hocking has indicated, is his consciousness of being a protector.  If he is deprived of that, he feels useless and perhaps a little absurd.

…Inaction is notoriously hard on a soldier’s morale.

(78)  In nonviolent resistance the suffering is itself a weapon or means of winning.

NB:  less suffering than determination, I believe

(86)  In quality a victory by nonviolent resistance is far more gallant and joyous than one by violence can ever be.  It requires no lying, distortion or suprression of the truth, no slaughter or threats.  It leaves no bad conscience or bad taste in the mouth.  The public opinion it gains is weighty and lasting.

Still another way in which mass nonviolent resistance operates is to end and clear away social defects, economic mistakes and political errors.  The semi-military discipline of the resisters, the getting rid of bad habits, the learning to struggle without anger, the social unity developed, the emphasis on moral factors, the appeal to the finest spirit of the opponents and onlookers, the generosity and kindness required - all these constitute a social purification, a creation of truer values and actions among all concerned.

(87)  When truth is more nearly approximated in action there is a tremendous gain in strength as well as a liberation.

(89)  Ghana, the new member of the British Commonwealth in West Africa, won its freedom in 1957 after a ten-year nonviolent struggle.  Its leader, Kwame Nkrumah, in his autobiography says explicitly that the campaign for freedom was “based on the principle of absolute nonviolence as used by Gandhi in India,” and “We repudiate war and violence."

(95-96)  Clausewitz’s principles of war have been summarized by a British writer [AA Walser]:  “Retaining the initiative, using the defensive form of action, concentration of force at the decisive point, the determination of that point, the superiority of the moral factor to purely material resources, the proper relation between attack and defense, and the will to victory.”

(97)  But psychologically, nonviolent resistance differs in one respect from war.  The object is not to make the opponent believe that he is crushed but to persuade him to realize that he can attain practical security, or whatever else his ultimate desire may be, by easier and surer means than he saw formerly.  The effort is furthermore to help him work out such new means, not rigidly or on any a priori plan, but flexibly in accordance with the deepest growing truth of the entire situation in all its bearings.  Nonviolence does not destroy the opponent’s courage, but merely alters his belief that his will and desire must be satisfied only in _his_ way.  Thus he is led to see the situation in a broader, more fundamental and far-sighted way, so as to work out a solution which will more nearly satisfy both parties in the light of a new set of conditions.

(103-104)  The nonviolent resister believes that a large part of the activities that the state are founded upon [is] a mistake, namely, the idea that fear is the strongest and best sanction for group action and association.

(104-105)  The struggle is fundamentally in the realm of ideas and moral principles, as Napoleon and other military writers have pointed out.  Since it is axiomatic among all warriors that the best form of defense is to attack, then the most efficient attack is not in the realm of material weapons but in the realm of ideas, feelings and moral principles.  I do not mean mere argument, though that is important, but still more by putting fine moral principles into action, by being strictly honest and candid with oneself as well as one’s opponents, admitting one’s past mistakes, first, unilaterally (every one of us has made mistakes), respecting one’s opponents and showing it in deeds, being willing to yield something - even something big and valuable, provided it is not a principle - being kind and generous to the opponents, stopping all threats and harsh holding-fast to the right.  This will be very difficult, a very high price to pay for peace.  But with all the load of past moral mistakes everywhere, we cannot have peace unless we are willing to pay a high price.

(105)  Peace, on the other hand, is not an institution.  Like happiness and liberty, it cannot be had by direct effort.  It is an indirect byproduct of other conditions, chief of which are mutual trust and a strong sense of the unity of mankind and its overriding importance.  Trust, in turn, grows out of deeds that reveal continuing intelligence, good will and desire to cooperate and promote the common welfare.  These underlying attitudes can be stimulated to grow.  Their growth can be begun unilaterally.  It is upon their developoment and growth that effort should be concentrated.  Once they are strong and permanent, peace will come automatically,

(107)  The advantages of nonviolent resistance is that it begins at home and can and needs to be practiced in all the small private relations bretween people as a preparation for and accompaniment of its use on a large scale.  Nobody can dodge the responsibility for its success.  The poorest and most insignificant can practice it as finely, successfully and usefully as prime ministers, presidents, financiers, labor leaders or other powerful persons.  Through nonviolent resistance we can reach an active, reasoned belief in the conditions that result in peace, conditions capable of continuous practice in all grades of life and all sorts of conflict, so as to educate everyone into a conviction that they give better results, more efficiently, than violence.

(122)  In conflict, what needs to be done is to change not people as such, but their attachment to certain ideas, sentiments, desires, and assumptions.  Such changes are not effected by killing or wounding the opponents.

(123)  In the persuasion of nonviolent resistance, there must be not only gentleness and love but also truth.  All human beings make mistakes.  Adherence to truth requires public admission of our mistakes.

(123-124)  There are other advantages in thus notifying the adversary in advance of what you are planning to do.  It shows a special kind of courage without threat.  It is a demonstration to the opponent and the public that you are truthful even when it is risky, and that you adhere to truth and trust it even at personal sacrifice or when it does not seem at first to be to the advantage of your cause.

(124)  Since trust is an essential prerequisite to persuasion, and truth creates trust, persistent devotion to truth at all costs is strongly persuasive.

(132)  The result of such interaction [search for common purpose] is not compromise but growth and adaptation, a change of character without loss of permanent integrity.

(147)  We who believe in nonviolence must change our habits before we ask an opponent to change his.

(148)  Hence nonviolent resisters in order to alter opponents must first subject themselves to self-discipline.

(151)  Stride Toward Freedom by Martin Luther King Jr

Conquest of Violence by Joan V Bondurant

(156)  Acquiring self-respect mitigates the resentment that is caused by humiliations, and thus makes self-control easier.  That is a great help toward success in using nonviolent resistance.

(163)  One of the hardest things which conscientious objectors during the world wars had to beat was a feeling of loneliness, a feeling that nobody agreed with them or cared about them.

(166)  Manual Work.  The beginning of action adequate to our problem is manual work.  Something all members of a team can work at together would be best, and that will be a service to the community.

NB:  swadeshi - not mentioned in the book or the index

barnraising, mutual aid and association

(167)  If believers in constructive, loving nonviolence will give their labor regularly and steadily to such repairs, sanitation work and cleaning-up, they will promote both individual and community morale and good feeling.

(182)  Danilo Dulci, Palermo (London:  MacGibbon & Kee, 1958) - Dolci was the Italian Gandhi